The leader of the People’s Party of Canada (PPC), Maxime Bernier, promises the tabling of a bill preventing abortion in the third and last trimester of pregnancy if he is elected MP.
“A murder is a murder,” said the candidate for the by-election in the Manitoba riding of Portage-Lisgar on Wednesday.
During a hybrid press briefing in Winkler, Manitoba, Mr. Bernier indicated that he would introduce such a bill at the first opportunity.
The head of the PPC had already signaled in the past that he considered that in the third trimester of pregnancy the fetus is developed to the point of being a child and that abortion should be prohibited in this context unless there are cases of exception.
The former MP for Beauce and former elected Conservative clarified his position in 2019, after saying he wanted to keep the possibility of deciding “in due time” how he would vote in the face of a possible bill restricting women’s rights to abortion.
In 2012, Mr. Bernier voted against a Conservative motion on the rights of the fetus, which aimed in particular to mandate a committee to determine when “a child becomes a human being”.
Now that he is campaigning as an aspiring deputy for the riding left vacant by the departure of the conservative Candice Bergen, Mr. Bernier is committed to tabling a bill aimed at restricting the right to abortion after six months of pregnancy. . He said Wednesday that such a legislative proposal had already been put forward by Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson, who was a candidate for the PPC and who was at his side on Wednesday.
Mr. Bernier also said he wanted to “reopen the debate” on the voluntary termination of pregnancy, mentioning that he was aware that some would find that the bill he wishes to introduce does not go far enough.
“We start with the last trimester and therefore we say that after six months, abortion must be prohibited unless the life of the mother or the child is in danger. Then we want to reopen the debate, ”he argued.
The leader of the PPC said he wanted to bring Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre to explain “why he is against reopening this debate”.
“When we reopen the debate, well, there are discussions in the parliamentary committee. I would like Canada to be one of the civilized countries to have regulations that respect life and that is what we have not done in Canada for 35 years,” added Mr. Bernier, referring to the years that have elapsed since the Morgentaler judgment.
This decision rendered in 1988 by the Supreme Court decriminalized abortion, which can since then be practiced at all stages of pregnancy.
A necessary evil “
So-called “late” terminations of pregnancy, i.e. those performed after 23 weeks, are rare in Quebec, according to an internal report from the Collège des médecins du Québec dated 2018. Women who request it are generally transferred to the United States, a practice described in the document as “unacceptable”. “Each year, between 10 and 25 women must travel to the United States to terminate an advanced pregnancy. They call their experience a “necessary evil”, “we can read.
If transfer to the United States is not possible, the woman may be sent to a Quebec institution based on one or more “eligibility criteria”, such as alcohol or drug dependence and “problematic moderate to severe mental health.
The location of this center is not disclosed in the partially redacted report sent to The Canadian Press by the College of Physicians of Quebec. If neither of these options is possible, then a volunteer doctor must be found to perform the abortion and a team, which must have “the authorization of the management of their institution”.
However, the woman “will often be forced to continue the pregnancy”, we note in the report.
The College of Physicians of Quebec has made recommendations to remedy the fact that the services offered in the province “leave something to be desired”. “Their (dis-)organization is extremely discriminatory towards women and promotes a regrettable stigmatization of caregivers who participate in IGT (so-called late pregnancy terminations)”, we concluded.
With information from Michel Saba